Monday, February 29, 2016

Characteristics of a Good Leader


Are you looking for the latest fad in leadership? You can go back several thousand years in history and find advice that is still pertinent today. The ageless advice is that good leaders must excel in planning, mentoring, and mediating. We need to remind ourselves that there might not be anything new under the sun and learn from history.
Planning:  One of the roles of leadership is to identify the aim of the organization and obtain buy-in from the employees so all are enthusiastically going in the same direction. To achieve this acceptance of the aim, the employees need to be involved in creating the action to achieve the aim in the desired time. The leaders then need to provide the adequate methods and materials in the required time to complete the strategic actions. Methods of measuring progress need to be developed followed by regular reviews.
Mentoring:  Leader’s roles include helping, training, communicating, encouraging, and counseling. Leaders are the role models who are emulated throughout the organization. Note that following actions are not useful in good management; directing, commanding, blaming, driving, losing one’s temper, and abdicating responsibility, Leaders also provide work processes for the employees that are realistic and effective.
Don’t forget to recognize accomplishments to provide positive feedback to the people. Deming used to say that dogs like a pat on the back, and people do too.
Mediating:  Good leaders build teamwork and curtail conflict up, down, and across the organization. This includes between employees and with suppliers, customers, and owners. An example was experienced several years ago. A client and their much larger customer had a relationship that was devoid of trust. The clients would not allow the customer into their plant because they were afraid that their customer would steal their propriety process and manufacture the product themselves. The customer would not allow the client to enter their facility to see how the product was used. A huge problem occurred because the client’s process was not able to meet the customer’s specifications without 100% inspecting and sorting. This was costly and time consuming. The consultant facilitated a meeting with high-level management of both companies and the client bared their soles. A control chart of the manufacturing process was presented that showed what the client’s process could produce 99.7% of the time. The customer said if they can do that and provide a control chart with each shipment, it is good enough and they changed their specifications. As a result, both companies achieved significant cost savings by reducing inspections to a random basis. In addition, both welcomed the other into their facilities and worked as a team to improve and innovate new products.
Do you still think there is nothing new in leadership techniques? Make it personal by looking at your own history. Think about the best leader you have ever had in your career. Were they effective at planning, mentoring, and mediating? What other positive attributes did they have? What would your employees say about you?



Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Fix the Right Stuff


We only have so much time, energy, and emotional drive; we need to deploy it wisely. It is much harder to regain momentum in the organization after a false start than it is to initiate it. Following are three areas in which we need to constantly remind ourselves to avoid missteps.
Fix the Problem, Not the Blame
Few people deliberately make mistakes. They want to be proud of their work and their organization. Blame is demoralizing and counter productive. Blame wastes time and money and delays customer satisfaction. We want and need an environment where people feel free to identify problems without experiencing repercussions. It can cause employees to hide problems and stifle innovation. Fixing the problem is constructive use of your energy; fixing blame is destructive to the organization. Focus on fixing the problem; it gets solved and the employees are happier.
Fix the Cause, Not the Symptom
If you spend time compensating for the symptoms of a problem, it doesn’t go away. The problem continues to exhaust time and effort. Fixing symptoms is just rework, over and over again. Instead, spend your time digging for the real cause of the problem and eliminating it so you can go on to more productive activities. When you break your arm, you don’t just take pain killers to mask your discomfort, you treat you arm in order to heal and reduce the pain. The same holds true for work, you should not just mask the pain and continue doing the same thing without removing the cause.
Fix the Process, Not the Product/Service
All work consists of a series of processes that produces our products or services. Bad processes, not by people doing something wrong, cause most problems. Two world leaders in the field of performance improvement shared thoughts on the percent of fault for problems. Joseph Juran stated that in his experience, he found 80% of the time it was a process problem and only 20% of the time was it people at fault. W. Edwards Deming said he thought 90-95% of the time it was a weak or faulty process that led to the problem. Again, don’t blame people, they are doing the best job they can with the processes they are given. Typically, management’s job is to create and improve the work processes and the people’s job to follow the processes. The ideal is to create processes that are incapable of producing bad products.

By focusing on the right things, fixing the right stuff, we can conserve our time and energy and get the best results. This results in happier and more fulfilled customers, employees, and managers.